Streaming Schlock

Well, here we are, another year closer to the boneyard, to misquote Philip Larkin.  You know, I wasn't going to reference my birthday in today's post, but, having watched two bad Italian science fiction films virtually back-to-back, I'm too exhausted to come up with anything else.  I had planned to write about one of those films today, but I'm just not in the mood and if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it is that if I'm not in the right headspace, then I'm not going to do the movie I'm writing about justice.  But to get back to my birthday, which was today, obviously, I've found myself increasingly wondering just why we are pressured to make a big deal about birthdays?  I remember when I was a young kid, there was always a huge expectation surrounding birthdays - expectation of getting presents, of having birthday celebrations and so on.  The trouble was, that I always found it all anti-climactic, whether it was my own birthday party or someone else's that I'd been invited to.  It could never meet the expectations that had been built up and I realised that I just wasn't enjoying the experience.  At which point I started a process of withdrawing from it all - I stopped accepting invitations to friends' birthday parties as I realised that would absolve me from reciprocally inviting them to mine which, in turn meant that I could stop having birthday parties.

As I got older and entered the world of work, if my birthday fell on a work day, I'd sometimes have a pint or two with colleagues after work.  Other times I might meet up with selected friends for a drink.  But as time has gone on, I've found my inclination to follow social conventions grow weaker.  Nowadays, I don't tell anybody in my workplace when my birthday is - that way I don't feel obliged to do anything to mark it and neither do they.  I don't even remind friends any more.  Thankfully, none of them seem to remember anyway, so I'm spared all the tiresome exchange of greetings and so on.  There was a time when it irritated me that some of my closer friends forgot my birthday (particularly when I'd remembered theirs), but as the years rolled by, I realised that it simply didn't matter.  So, today I had a quite day.  Watching Italian science fiction movies and setting up my new Roku box, which now means that I can stream all manner of crap directly onto my TV.  Which I've already started doing: those Superman cartoons from the 1940s, episodes of the 1950s Ronald Howard Sherlock Holmes TV series, an episode of the Captain America cinema serial from 1944.  It's all there.  You know, there's even a channel devoted solely to showing the Beverley Hillbillies - horrific indeed.  That was my birthday present to me - more and more schlock.  If those Italian science fiction movies can't fry my brain, then maybe this tidal wave of crap can...